Even with the present day advances in medicines and healthcare, people, especially senior citizens and disabled persons, face a number of challenges in taking care of their health at home. Typically there is little assistance for the ‘home patient’ in managing multiple prescriptions and inventories of medicines. According to some estimates, the average senior person is prescribed up to thirteen different oral medications that must be taken correctly at different times each day. These medications are typically delivered in bulk supply and must be sorted, managed, and then taken correctly by the individual, leading to numerous errors and omissions, including failing to take the medications at the prescribed time, taking the medications at the wrong time and/or in the incorrect amount, misusing the medications, dangerously combining the medications with other medications, under-using the medications, or over-using the medications, collectively referred to “non-compliance”.
The costs associated with such non-compliance are higher than the costs associated with a number of major illnesses. Studies have shown that 10% of admissions to regular hospitals in the United States are due to non-compliance, at a cost of $15 billion a year, and 30% of hospital admissions for people over the age of 65 are directly caused by non-compliance. Non-compliance causes 125,000 deaths per year—twice as many as are caused by auto accidents. Twenty-three percent to forty percent of nursing home admissions are due to noncompliance and inability to take medications at home unsupervised. According to estimates, nearly half of all prescriptions, are taken incorrectly, contributing to prolonged or additional illness. People who miss doses need 3 times as many doctor visits as others and face an average of $2,000 more in medical costs per year.
The fact that the aging population continues to grow, combined with the steady increase in the average number of medications prescribed per person, indicates that these issues will continue to compound along with the associated costs.
In order to ensure that medications are taken at the proper time, a variety of devices, such as the ones disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,361,408 and 7,944,342, have been devised to generate audible and/or visible prompting or alarm signals that remind a patient or his caretaker to administer the correct dosages at the correct time. Various dispensing devices have also been developed to help patients adhere to their medication protocols or regimens. Examples of such devices are provided in U.S. Pat. Nos. 8,060,246 and 8,196,774.
U.S. Patent Application Nos. 62/171,646, 62/263,345, 62/292,713, and Ser. No. 15/172,696, which are incorporated herein, by reference, in their entirety, disclose a simple yet efficient system that not only reminds a patient to take medication according to their prescribed schedule, but also provides the required medicines to the patient in a simple, convenient and reliable manner. In the example system, medications are provided to the patient in pouches which are dispensed from a strip of said pouches wound in a cartridge.
There may be a need for a system to efficiently and accurately load the strip of medication pouches in the dispensing cartridge so that the cartridge is ready to be used in a dispenser.